


Pig

by seeminglyincurablesentimentality (myinnerchildisbored)



Series: Rose and Tommy - Bonus Material [7]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:09:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinnerchildisbored/pseuds/seeminglyincurablesentimentality
Summary: For the AMAZING prompt: "Tommy's POV that time Rosie ran off with Curly after Charlie is born..."How could one possibly resist? One can't.
Series: Rose and Tommy - Bonus Material [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602865
Comments: 51
Kudos: 64





	1. Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simonon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simonon/gifts).



> This will be in two parts (because it's not finished and I'm too excited about it to wait, essentially.)  
> Hope everyone's well and sane!

It was gone two in the morning by the time the big white one foaled and Tommy, pleasantly exhausted and oddly buoyed by the miracle of life, fell into bed and through wild dreams of fillies and women and the huffs and squalls of the newly born. They were deep dreams and wild ones and it wasn’t until Grace was gently pushing on his shoulder that he realised that the muffled cries were part of the waking world.  
  
“Will you get him?” Grace asked, voice thick with sleep.  
  
He very nearly asked her what they’d hired Frances for, but didn’t. They’d hired Frances so he’d have a wife beside him when they’d company; so they could have a ride once in a while with the doors closed. Alas, tonight the door was open and, so Tommy reminded himself as he swung his legs out of bed and stifled a cough, a man wasn’t going to receive an infinite number of chances to turn himself into a proper father. The kind, who got up in the night and fetched the baby when it was crying. The kind, who’d be remembered as a reassuring presence, a shield against the fears of the dark and the worries of the world.  
  
He padded through to the nursery. Charlie’s cries droned on and Tommy, eyes only half-open to the early dawn blueness of the world, reached for the bundle in the woven bassinet. Charlie’d rolled onto his side, white bonnet obscuring his face.  
  
“Orr-“  
  
His hands were met with something hard and gnarly; he’d been expecting the soft bendiness of Charles’ seemingly boneless form, it jarred him. He bent forward, extended a cautious finger towards the edge of the bonnet-  
  
A sound rang through the room, so foreign and so deep, a sound Tommy hadn’t known he could make. He flew backwards as if electrocuted, stumbled, whacked the back of his head on the edge of the chest of drawers hard enough to see stars.  
  
There was a flutter of a lighter shade of blue and the quick taps of Grace’s bare feet as she came running in.  
  
“Don’t-“ Tommy gasped, struggling to get to his feet; but Grace was already at the bassinet, reaching in.  
  
She froze. Tommy staggered to his feet and lurched towards her, grabbing for her shoulders, ready to wrench her away from whatever the fuck- Grace was breathing so hard, it send tremors down his arms. For a moment they stood and stared at the milky white eyes and the downy, motionless snout; the twisted little knuckle protruding from the swaddle. They became so still, even the rush of blood drowning out even the sound of his own breaths died down; like the whole world had been silenced by horror.  
  
A pitiful wail broke through, shattered whatever had been closing in on them.  
  
“Charlie…” Grace breathed and dropped so suddenly, Tommy thought she’d fainted.  
  
The baby screamed again and Grace, on all fours, raced to the lounge, ripped aside the drapes brushing the floor and pulled out the travel basket, Charlie, red-faced and  
screeching, inside it.  
  
Tommy’s legs gave way with a relief so profound he thought his heart might give out as well.  
  
“What the fuck…” he was shuffling over to them now, muttering. “What the fuck...”  
  
“He’s fine,” Grace whispered, tears streaming down her face, shaking so hard it made Charlie sound as if he’d the hiccups. “Take him, Tommy-“  
  
He just made it, just managed to get a hold of his tiny son before Grace’s arms fell uselessly by her sides, her hands curled and useless.  
  
“Grace-“  
  
“Jus’ a moment…” she sounded miles away. “I’ll be…”  
  
Her jaw went slack and she slumped against the sofa.  
  
“Fuck-“  
  
Tommy didn’t have a free hand, Charlie was going ballistic in his arms, outraged at being passed on.  
  
“Sh-sh-sh…” Tommy soothed, to no effect at all. “Come on, Charlie-boy, no bawlin’ allowed…”  
  
“Gracious, Missis Shelby-“  
  
Frances was in the room, bending over Grace, her eyes darting from howling baby to lifeless mother to useless man.  
  
“What happened?” she demanded shakily. “Mister Shelby? What on earth-“  
  
“I don’t bloody know, Frances,” he snapped. “There’s a fuckin’ pig- how the fuck – who the fuck-“  
  
Grace was stirring now, pushing up, lifting her head.  
  
“Missis Shelby…” Frances was running to the dresser, returning with a wet washcloth, ready to start dabbing and fanning, when her eyes hitched on the contents of the bassinet,  
the sight of which set off a piercing shriek and a flurry of signs of the cross.  
  
“Frances-“ Grace started groggily.  
  
“ _Oh, divine, eternal father-_ “  
  
“Shut up!” Tommy roared.  
  
The silence was as startled as it was immediate, even Charlie stopped mid-yowl and stared up at him with wide eyes. Tommy got to his feet unsteadily, rearranged Charles against his chest and leaned back against the dresser; caught a hushed whisper by the door. It was Mary, trying to stealthily hustle along a couple of the younger maids, who were stuck, staring and open-mouthed.  
  
Tommy couldn’t blame them, a fucker of a racket like this was bound to bring half the house running…  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Take him,” he demanded, shoving Charlie at Frances, who was still silently crossing herself.  
  
“Tommy-“ Grace began, but he was already running from the room, nearly took out a vase when he skidded round the corner into the corridor.  
  
There wasn’t a way… there wasn’t a fucking way Rosie would have slept through this…there wasn’t any fucking way at all she’d have stayed in bed if she’d heard…  
He crashed into Rose’s room and found the bed empty. He spun, eyes scanning the room. She’d made herself a tent in a corner; she was sleeping in the wardrobe, pretending to be some fucking wood sprite in its hollow log…  
  
She wasn’t there. Rose wasn’t in the room.  
  
“Fuck-“  
  
He was flying down the corridor, his feet weren’t touching the ground, he didn’t think they were; wrenching doors open as he went.  
  
“Rosie?”  
  
She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the house.  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
He was outside, the pale morning cool and wet on his face, the drive perfectly quiet apart from the soft whinnies drifting from the stable and the fucking birds starting up in the tree.  
  
“Rosie!”  
  
Calling, roaring, belting across the empty gravel, like some sort of eejit-  
  
“Tommy?” Grace was outside with him, hair everywhere, bare feet.  
  
“She’s gone-“  
  
“What are you-“ she reached for him, tried to turn his face away from the empty, open road, trying to make him see her. “Who’s gone?”  
  
“Rose,” he heard himself say. “She’s fuckin’ gone-“  
  
He shook Grace off and ran for the phone, up the front steps in two leaps and pounding the fork before the office door’d had a chance to hit the wall.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Arthur-“ Tommy took a breath and it got stuck and all of a sudden he was bracing himself against the fucking desk, his chest so tight he feared his lungs might burst.  
  
“What?” he heard his brother grunt. “Tommy? What’s-“  
  
He willed himself upright, felt the bubble pop and shoot upwards.  
  
“Everyone. To the shop. Now.” Every word cost him a year of his life. “I call there. Ten minutes.”

“To-“  
  
He slammed the receiver down, reached for the bottle on the desk automatically; went as far as to take the stopper out, before he hurled it into the fireplace with a roar that would’ve stopped an advancing brown bear in its tracks. 

#

  
Who the fuck had gotten in? How the fuck had they done it? And why in the fuckin’ hell hadn’t they called yet? If they’d taken Rosie for leverage, then why the fuck hadn’t they called to make their fucking demands? And why not take Charles as well? Why go through the fuckin’ trouble to swap a baby, who might wake and give the game away at any second, with a dead fuckin’ piglet?  
  
It was an insane thing to do; something that served no purpose other than some kind of sadistic fuckin’ one-upmanship. They’d wanted him rattled, whoever it was, and they’d done the job. Rattled to the fucking core, he was.  
  
Arthur was coming out, Polly as well. And the lads were swarming. Kicking down doors and demanding answers. He’d not even given them any decent questions, but they’d beat  
the answers out nonetheless.  
  
How the fuck had they got it? Why the fuck hadn’t Rosie made noise? He’d been up until two in the fuckin’ morning; how the bloody hell had they gotten past him? And why – why the fuck – hadn’t they called?

#

  
Pol was on the phone to the coppers, taking two drags to a cigarette before lighting the next. Arthur was pacing, gun in hand, back from his furious and useless patrol of the perimeter. Tommy was forcing his hand to still on the desk, staring into nothingness, reeling off the options for the umpteenth time - IRA, Italians, Jews, IRA, Italians, Jews – and coming up blank.  
  
“Tommy?”  
  
His eyes focused and there was Grace at the door.  
  
“What?”  
  
“A word.”  
  
“Whatever it is you have to say, you might as well say it in here,” Polly spat, grinding out a decimated cigarette.  
  
“Thomas.”  
  
He got up, felt two pairs of incredulous eyes follow him to the door and pulled it shut behind him.  
  
“What, Grace?”  
  
She was looking at him strangely, he’d a hard time working out what it was. He couldn’t spare the time.  
  
“What?” he snapped.  
  
“What if no one got in?” Grace asked.  
  
Tommy blinked.  
  
“There’s nothing,” Grace went on. “No one saw, no one heard, nothing’s disturbed.”  
  
He opened his mouth but no sound came out.  
  
“All keys are accounted for,” Grace said. “The staff are all in, no one’s missing.”  
  
“Rose-“ Tommy pressed her name through gritted teeth. “Rose is fucking missing. Someone’s taken her.”  
  
“Or she’s run off.”  
  
He’d always told himself that he wasn’t the sort of man, who’d ever raise a hand to his wife. It’d never occurred to him that any sort of anger would ever come close to overriding the conviction that it was a pathetic thing to do.  
  
“Why would she?” He barely got the words out, his hands clenched into fists of granite.  
  
Grace just looked at him.  
  
“She hates him, Tommy,” she said.  
  
“Not enough to run away,” he shot back. “And even if she had – that still wouldn’t explain the fuckin’ pig in the baby’s fuckin’ bed!”  
  
His voice was rising steadily, but Grace didn’t shrink from him. She stood tall, her face perfectly still, waited for him to finish.  
  
“It might.”  
  
She said it so simply, so matter-of-fact, it took him a moment to register what she was saying.  
  
“You fucking what?” Tommy asked, surprised at the venom in his voice.  
  
“Tom-“  
  
He grabbed her; wrapped his hand round her arm and pulled her close enough to kiss, or to rip her throat out with his bare teeth. It frightened him, this sudden surge of wanting to break her open, but it frightened Grace even more.  
  
“When I let go,” he hissed, “you walk away. And you don’t come near me again until I’ve got her back.”  
  
He tightened his hold on her for a moment, to the point of making her gasp. When he let go, she walked away; and Tommy turned heel and marched back into the office.  
  
Pol was on the phone to John, taking two drags to a cigarette before lighting the next. Arthur was pacing, gun in one hand, bottle in the other. Tommy sat down, forced his hand to still on the desk, stared into nothingness. _IRA, Italians, Jews, IRA, Italians…_


	2. Day, Night and Another Morning Yet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, it turned out a bit more involved that I anticipated...also, I've started a fun new project - check it out:  
> https://krautcontrol.wixsite.com/noeventtoday  
> Subscribe and tell all your friends - it's a bit real lifey, true, but you might enjoy it nonetheless. (Also, I'm literally an advertising retard, so over to you, good folk of the internet) xx

The house was closing in around Tommy like a vice. It was fucking pathetic. The thing was the size of Buckingham fuckin’ palace and it was throttling him. And the house wasn’t even the trap; he was ensnared by indecision. It was new. It was unfamiliar.  
  
He couldn’t make his fucking mind up. Head up to London, drive into Birmingham, stay the fuck put and near the phone – mulling it over and over and sitting there like the worst kind of useless bastard. He’d dispatched Arthur to Small Heath to make sure the finest of combs was applied to every basement and back room; not because he thought  
Arthur’s presence would make a particular difference, he just hadn’t been able to stand him any longer. The pacing, the brooding, the wild speculations bursting forth with all the conviction of proven fact, despite being absurdly contradictory – it had been as if the voices Tommy was trying his hardest to silence within himself had simply possessed Arthur instead. Turned his brother into a non-stop radio broadcast of horrors. Better to wear him out in the field, the more useful Arthur felt, the more he kept it together.  
  
Because a man needed fucking purpose, didn’t he.

#

They jumped every time the phone rang, Tommy and Pol; there wasn’t a call he didn’t pick up within half-a-ring.  
  
Ada, assuring him every spare cog in her private clockwork was working to dig up information. But nothing yet.  
  
John, telling him they’d been through every hole as far as Fox Hollies and had found fuck all.  
  
Johnny Dogs, from some phonebooth in the middle of nowhere, letting him know there’d been no talk of any shifty business he knew of, nor had there been a thing in the leaves or the cards.  
  
Alfie bloody Solomons, advising him to back the fuck off and leave him to his business, which – just to break routine, right – did not have anything about shechting the first-borns of the non-believers on the agenda, so ta-ta and fuck you very much.  
  
Charlie, stuck at the shipyard waiting for a package from down river, unable to leave his post until Curly got back, his growl tinged with worry.  
  
Arthur, informing him he’d had a chat with an Irishman, received sweet fuck in terms of information, but had quite possibly beaten the useless bastard to death.  
  
The lads from the stables returned one by one, having been sent out in every direction the road had to offer to talk to whoever they could spot working in the fields and in the pubs, asking if there’d been a sighting of a car, a horse, anything at fucking all that could be used to spirit away a small girl. Nothing.  
  
The clock slowed to a near stop, only to perform capricious leaps at random intervals. Tommy willed time to speed up, to speed him towards the point of answers, only to be punched in the gut every time a full hour chimed out in the hall.  
  
Rosie’d been missing for three hours. Four hours. Five hours. Six.  
  
He could hear Mary walking up the stairs, the soft clink of silver and porcelain, the sound of Grace’s lunch being transported up to where she’d taken refuge with Charlie.  
  
Seven hours.

#

“Something’s off.”  
  
Pol had been standing by the window so still and silently, he’d nearly forgotten she was there. She startled him.  
  
“There’d be something by now,” Pol said. “No matter how fuckin’ small.”  
  
“Grand,” Tommy rasped, his voice raw from cigarettes and shouting down the phone. “That’s really fuckin’ good to know.”  
  
“You know,” Pol went on, “they’d play hide-and-seek round the house sometimes, Rosie and Finn, and she’d cram herself into a kitchen cupboard, pull shut the door and just freeze. Fell asleep once, took us hours to find her. She thought that was a great laugh-“  
  
“She’s nowhere in the fuckin’ house-“ Tommy started at top volume.  
  
“Looked, have you?” Pol interrupted coolly.  
  
It pulled him up short – because he hadn’t looked, save the rampage through the upstairs corridor a lifetime ago this morning – but only for a second.  
  
“And she’s picked the very morning when some sick bastard sneaks into the house to replace me son with a fuckin’ pig?” he barked.  
  
Polly hummed strangely.  
  
“Fucking go and look then,” Tommy roared, on his feet now, hitting the desk and upsetting the overflowing ashtray. “ _Come out, come out, wherever you are_!”  
  
Pol turned heel and was gone from the room with a resounding slam of the door.  
  
Fucking women. Fucking hell.  
  
Tommy sat back down and stared at the phone.

#

The front gate was throwing its shadow nearly to the fountain in the centre of the driveway. Pol hadn’t come back into the office. Tommy stopped staring out of the window, looked down at the desk and found its edge marred with crescent moons. He examined his hands, found the nails in tatters and the tips of his fingers smeared with red.  
  
Fuck this.  
  
He had to do something. Pol could man the fucking phone.  
  
He wandered through the empty corridors, vaguely aware of Charlie gurgling behind the closed nursery door, mixed with Grace’s soft murmurs. The door to Rose’s room was still open and on the bed, her back to him, sat Polly.  
  
“I’m going out to look,” Tommy announced. “Don’t let the phone ring out. I’ll call every hour.”  
  
He turned to leave.  
  
“Wait.”

He turned back and Pol was on her feet, a bit paler than usual, holding something out to him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Look at this.”  
  
He took a book from her outstretched hand, kept his thumb in between the pages where she held it open. _Alice in Wonderland_. Grace had gotten it for Rosie, it’d been one of her favourites when she’d been a girl, she’d said. Rosie’d seemed pleased enough, he’d barely caught her with her nose out of it in the last weeks. She could read well, Rosie, her teachers said so as well.  
  
“I-“  
  
He looked down at the page and stopped. It hadn’t been cheap, the bloody book, bound in leather and full of pictures you could’ve framed and hung on the wall. There was a woman, her face distorted in distaste, frowning down at a bundle in her arms. She wasn’t holding a baby. Inside the swaddle, lovingly rendered with black ink, was a pig. Bonnet and all.  
  
Tommy opened his mouth but nothing came out. He cleared his throat violently.  
  
“She-“  
  
“You know, she would,” Pol cut him off.  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Then where the fuck’s she gone?” he heard himself ask.  
  
“She ain’t here,” Pol said darkly. “I’ve been through every nook and cranny, the maids as well and Frances. And the lads would’ve heard, someone would’ve seen her if she’d  
walked off on her own.”  
  
“Not if-“  
  
“There’s no horse missing,” Pol interrupted.  
  
“Then where in the fuck has she gone?” Tommy roared.  
  
“I don’t fuckin’ know, Thomas,” Polly roared back.

“What-“ he started, but something in Pol’s demeanor changed so suddenly, it stopped him dead. Her face slid from furious to that vaguely superior blankness she reserved for company.  
  
She was looking at something behind him and he wheeled around with a surge of hope, but it was only Grace.  
  
“Charles is napping,” she said quietly.

Tommy was at a loss. She’d told him. Hours ago she’d told him. He didn’t know where to begin; but he didn’t have to. Grace was coming into the room, she was taking the book  
from his hands, taking in the picture.  
  
He couldn’t read her face when she looked up at him. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but there was too much in the set of her mouth and the flicker in her eyes and the crease between her brows, too much for a man already whirling round in a maelstrom of his own.  
  
“I’ve to go…”

Where though? Fucking where? Pol was right; if Rose had gone off along the road she’d have been spotted, some fucker would have had to see. He’d sent the grooms out as soon as he’d gotten of the phone after calling Arthur. Rose had had a couple of hours head start at the very most. There wasn’t a way she’d have outrun them on foot…if she’d been on foot…  
  
Tommy abandoned Grace, Pol and Alice in Wonderland; and was down the stairs, back in the office and on the phone before either of them had a chance to even shout after him.  
  
“Charlie?” He was breathing heavily, as if he’d run for miles not just across the bloody house. “Is Curly back?”  
  
“He bloody should be,” his uncle growled.  
  
“Well, where the bloody hell is he?”  
  
“I’ve not had word.”  
  
“Where the fuck was he going?” Tommy was already fishing for a gun and a spare pack of cigarettes in the desk.  
  
“Burntwood.“  
  
“To see who?” Tommy shrugged into his coat.  
  
“Chauncey’s widow-“  
  
Tommy didn’t bother hanging up properly; drove over a stable hand as he tore through the gates two minutes later.

#

It was pissing down rain, he hadn’t noticed. It was getting dark, he couldn’t see a fucking thing. He’d have been better off on a horse. The road got bad, boggy as shite. It took him twice as long to get to Burntwood than it should’ve done.  
  
It’d been unfortunate business, the demise of Chauncey Garfield. An accident. Collateral damage of Arthur Shelby’s drunken one-man wars.  
  
They’d only been back for a couple of weeks when some lad got lippy with Arthur at the pub and Arthur, in his infinite wisdom, decided the best way to shut the lad up was to lob his glass at him. Alas, the little fucker ducked and Chauncey, who’d been sitting a behind, havin’ a quiet one on his todd, copped it square on the temple. He’d been a staunch bastard in France, Chauncey, they’d all liked him. He’d have been fine, if he hadn’t gone down like a sack of shite on an awkward angle and cracked his bloody neck in half.  
  
The widow Garfield was looked after on principle; but there’d never been any expression of gratitude. She spat and curse whichever man got the privilege to deliver reparations; and she wasn’t at all pleased to have Tommy battering on her door well past polite visiting hours.  
  
“I didn’t see a girl,” she hissed at him, a face on her like she wanted nothing more than to ram a knife into his gut. “Was the slow fella, bringin’ me a fuckin’ sow –“  
  
“When?” Tommy cut her off.  
  
Missis Garfield crossed her arms and glared.  
  
“Early,” she snapped.  
  
Tommy turned heel and stormed towards the car, was nearly there when Missis Garfield’s voice rang after him.  
  
“I pray you’ll know my fuckin’ pain-“  
  
She sprang back when he came charging towards the house, slammed the door in his face. Tommy gave the door an almighty whack, pain shooting up his arm. There was a dog barking somewhere inside or behind the fuckin’ house and the widow was screaming blue murder, curses mingling with the rain and drenching him.  
  
“…and when you do…” Missis Garfield yelled at the top of her lungs “…when you know what it’s like to have the heart burnt out of you, I’ll send you a lad with a fuckin’ sow and see how it eases the sufferin’…”  
  
He nearly kicked in the door, he’d his hand on the gun, he’d put her out of her pain, the miserable cow; but only nearly. Dripping head to toe, he threw himself into the motor instead and started back the way he’d come.

#

Every phonebooth he passed, he called the big house; and every time he called, Pol told him there’d been nothing. No word from Charlie, no word from Curly.  
  
She wasn’t with him. She couldn’t be. He’d been so fuckin’ sure; but there wasn’t a way Curly would take Rose with him without Tommy’s knowing. And if she’d snuck onto his cart, he’d have called as soon as he’d noticed; and he would’ve noticed.  
  
He’d been so fucking sure. He’d had a flash of hope, latched onto it, fucking fallen prey to wishful thinking and all it’d done was waste time.  
  
The rain wouldn’t stop. It was washing out the road, flooding the ditches; bringing down images of Rose, soaked to the skin, huddling under a tree, inside a shrub, some place he couldn’t begin to guess at.  
  
It was the dead of night when he got back to the house, Pol still sitting vigil in the office, silhouetted against the only bright window in the dark, forbidding building. She didn’t speak when Tommy came in; she simply moved towards the window and let him take his place at the desk. They waited in silence, smoking, waiting for the phone to ring.

#

Dawn was breaking, tinging the office blue. Charlie’s early morning wails drifted from the upstairs and Tommy’s skin crawled with memories. Pol was leaning against the bookcase, looking off into the distance. Tommy saw her cigarette drop and her head whip around before the sound of the phone caught up with him.  
  
“Tommy?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Rosie’s orright,” Charlie said. “Curly called. She’s with him.”  
  
He had to sit down. Nearly didn’t make it back into the chair.  
  
“They’re on the way here. Two hours, he reckons,” his uncle went on. “The cart shat itself. They’d to wait out the rain ‘cause of the load.”  
  
Tommy willed himself forward, getting the mouthpiece in reach with considerable effort.  
  
“ ‘m coming,” he said thickly.  
  
“Go easy,” Charlie said. “You’ve time.”  
  
“ ‘m on me way now…”  
  
He was dizzy, the adrenalin was driving him out of his skin; he went in bursts, it was hard to keep from gasping audibly.  
  
“What?” Polly asked urgently, leaning over the desk, staring at him.  
  
“She’s with Curly,” Tommy managed, forcing himself to breathe through his nose.  
  
Pol’s shoulders fell, her eyes filled, she’d to brace herself against the desk with her elbows.  
  
“Christ almighty…” It was between a sigh and a sob.  
  
Tommy heaved himself out of the chair, found his legs steady and a heat brewing inside his battered guts. Two hours. He’d be there to meet them. Two hours. Nothing. Nothing compared to the eternal day that’d passed.

#

  
By the time he got out of the motor at the yard, Tommy could feel every nerve in his body standing to attention. He slammed the door, marched up to the living shed and found his uncle already pouring a whiskey.  
  
“Right,” Tommy said once he’d inhaled the better part of his glass. “What’s his fuckin’ excuse?”  
  
“Eh?” Charlie cocked his head at him.  
  
“Curly,” Tommy growled. “Why the fuck didn’t he-“  
  
“This one’s not on him, Tom,” his uncle cut him off.  
  
“Is it not?” Tommy glared at Charlie, his jaw so tight it threatened to break what was left of his back teeth. “Not a word, not for a whole fuckin’day-“  
  
“She said it was on your orders.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Our Rosie told Curly you’d said for him to take her.”  
  
The ensuing silence was broken by the muffled clacks of advancing horse shoes. Charlie leaned back in his chair and pulled aside the curtain.  
  
“There they are…” he said wearily. “Now, Tom-“  
  
But Tommy was already out the door.  
  
_She’d run off. She’d run off and now she was back…_  
  
Curly was leading a laden, tired looking horse towards the stable. He stopped dead when he saw Tommy coming down the stairs, his hands started fluttering, nearly whacked the mare with the reigns.  
_  
A pig in the cot, the baby under the fuckin’ sofa…  
_  
Rose was frozen by the car, her eyes darting to his face, then back to the ground between them. She was wearing Curly’s jacket; it made her look like some workhouse orphan, but she was unhurt.

 _She’d lied to him, taken advantage of Curly being the way he was…  
_  
She wasn’t looking at him, even though he was right in front of her now, grinding to a halt like a train at the station.  
_  
Grace’d worked it out…and he’d very nearly struck her for her trouble…  
_  
Slowly, ever so slowly, Rose turned her face up. She’d some straw in her hair and there was a smudge on her temple.  
_  
Run off to leave him suspended, useless, incapacitated with fuckin’ fear…  
_  
“Orright?”  
  
He grabbed her by the scruff and whacked her.  
_  
The nerve of her…the fuckin’ nerve…Every man on the streets-  
_  
“Yea, orright,” he hissed in a voice he’d not heard in a long time.  
_  
\- every single man, tearing up the streets looking for her-  
_  
Rose curled into a ball, no part of her touching the ground, but he’d a solid grip on the jacket, his free hand cracking down any place it could.  
  
“Orright-“ Tommy roared, “-bloody orright…”  
  
_He’d been in tears…on his own in the motor in the mud on the road to Burntwood…very nearly weeping…  
_  
Rose yelped and twisted-  
_  
Let her…fuckin’ let her. If he’d taught her respect none of this shite would’ve happened…but, fuck it, he’d bloody teach her now…  
_  
Something caught his arm mid-swing. Tommy tried to wrench free, lost his footing. Rose pulled free – no, was being pulled free; Charlie and Curly were in between them now, shielding her.  
  
“C-c-c-calm down, Tommy…”  
  
_The interfering fuckers, he’d deck both of them, he wasn’t fuckin’ finished by a long shot…  
_  
“It’s enough,” Charlie said.  
  
Tommy took a step towards them and Rose bolted, flew across the shipyard and into the nearest shed.  
  
“Move,“ Tommy shouted, suddenly aware that his heart was going a million miles an hour.  
  
“No.” He sounded calm as anything, Charlie, but Tommy could see how he was planting his feet, ready to take him, try to anyway, when he came at him.  
  
“Sh-sh-sh-“ Curly had his hands out like Tommy was nothing but a spooked horse, “-she’s sorry…she-“

"She bloody will be-“  
  
“No…no…come on…” Curly screwed his eyes shut for a moment. “Come on, she’s only-“  
  
“What? She’s only what?” Tommy advanced but Curly, to his surprise, held his ground. “D’you know what she’s done, Curly? Eh?”  
  
“I do, yea,” Curly said shakily. “But-“  
  
“But fuckin’ nothing!” Tommy’s hands curled into fists on their own accord. “She’s getting a hiding and-“  
  
“Not like this but,” Curly said. “Not like your old man used to give.”  
  
Tommy went still.  
  
“Good man, Curly,” Charlie said quietly.  
  
“Fuck…” Tommy groaned.  
  
“It won’t do any good,” Curly said. “Will it, Tommy?”  
  
“Bloody hell…”  
  
“No one said it’d be easy, eh?” Charlie growled.  
  
“Orright.” Tommy took a deep breath. “Orright.”  
  
Curly eyed him cautiously.  
  
“Not like that,” he said again.  
  
“No,” Tommy said. “Not like that.”  
  
“Orright.”  
  
Curly moved aside.

#

“Rose?”  
  
The shed was deserted and for a moment Tommy’s gut went heavy with the certainty that she’d run off again; but then he caught a flurry of dress up above. Rose was on a shelf, wedged between crates, crouching to keep her head from scraping on the roof.  
  
“Come down.”  
  
Her face appeared over the edge of the shelf.  
  
“Did I kill i- him?” she called down.  
  
“Did you kill him?” he repeated incredulously. “Did you kill your brother? Is that what you’re askin’ me?”  
  
“Yea,” Rose croaked, her eyes glued to him now as if she was worried he’d start scaling the shelf himself.  
  
“Come down!”  
  
“No, you’ll kill me.”  
  
Fuck. A tingle went up his spine, spreading across his shoulders, leaving old childhood scars alive with memories.  
  
“No one’s getting killed and no one’s gotten killed,” he said, forcing some calm into his voice. “Everyone’s gettin’ to live another day.”  
  
You couldn’t ask a man to do better than this under the circumstances.  
  
“Swear.”  
  
Apparently, you could.  
  
“Fuck’s sake, Rosie…”  
  
She had to see that he was trying, that he was trying his very fucking best to be reasonable when by rights he should have flogged her all the way back to the big house.  
  
“Not that kind of swearin’,” Rose called down.  
  
“You’re bloody unbelievable,” Tommy yelled.  
  
There was some shuffling by the door; Curly hovering, half-in half-out of the shed. A face on him half-way between terror and determination. He was ready, Curly, ready to take  
on the madman and save Rosie’s hide. He’d become the sort of man, whose children needed to be fuckin’ protected; the kind of man, who might do anything when provoked, no matter how small and breakable to opponent; the very man he’d sworn he’d never become. He’d spent months whispering promises of this to Rose through the tight drum of  
Greta’s belly.  
  
“It’s orright, Curly,” he sighed.  
  
“You’re not s-startin’ again?” Curly asked.  
  
“No, I’m not startin’ again.”  
  
Curly was in the shed with them now, looking up at Rosie, tilting his head back so far his hat nearly came off.  
  
“He has to promise,” Rose insisted.  
  
“He can’t,” Curly called up. “But I promise he won’t do what you want him to promise not to do.”  
  
“How can you tell?”  
  
“ ‘cause I know.”  
  
It was good enough, apparently. Curly, who’d never so much as hurt a fly unless ordered to do so, vouching for Tommy of the loose hands. Jesus Christ. By the time Rose had her feet on the ground, Curly had disappeared again.  
  
“Come here,” Tommy said.  
  
Very slowly, Rose came. He could see a bruise starting to blossom across her cheekbone. Made a man want to jump off a bridge.  
  
“Orright?” he asked quietly.  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Are you?” she asked.  
  
“Am I fuck…”  
  
There was nothing right about this.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
He hadn’t ever had her apologise for anything, he didn’t think he had. He looked down at her, found her chewing her lip, and very nearly apologised as well. Stopped himself when the words were pushing against his teeth, just in time. It was a brick out the wall when one man apologised to another, start apologising to your kids and you might as well tear the house down.  
  
“You run off like that again, I’ll have your guts for fuckin’ garters, Rosie,” he said gruffly.  
  
He’d expected her to grovel, turn more contrite still, but she was beaming.  
  
“Are you bloody smiling?”  
  
Rosie couldn’t get the look off her face, she grinned up at him, blushing slightly. It reminded him of Arthur, the old man’s biggest champion, singing his praises even when he’d split his lips.  
  
“I’m sorry…” she said, sounding not sorry at all.  
  
“Christ,” he shook his head and exhaled deeply. “You’re a piece of work and a half.”  
  
It’d taken the old man years to beat the hope out of Arthur; truth be told, Tommy wasn’t sure he’d gotten it all even then.  
  
“Sorry,” Rosie tried again, all teeth.  
  
It was a worry, that hope, that trust.  
  
“You’re orright,” Tommy sighed. “But you won’t have much to smile about when Grace sets eyes on you.”  
  
“You won’t let her kill me but.”  
  
The nerve of her, the fuckin’ nerve. Tommy felt a grin threaten to dislodge his fatherly authority. He bit the insides of his cheeks, calmly looking down at Rose’s ever-widening  
smile, until he could trust himself to keep a straight face.  
  
“No, Rosie, I won’t,” he said finally. “Come on.”  
  
She went ahead, nearly skipping, wrapped her arms round Curly on the way to the car. It gave Tommy an unexpected pang of envy that Curly simply returned the hug without giving it another thought.


End file.
